OLDaily

By Stephen Downes
February 24, 2005

Community BloggingText of the
talk delivered to the Northern Voice conference. There is
no centralized place that constitutes community, there are
only people, and resources, that are distributed. By
Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, February 19, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Multi User WebloggingA number
of people have asked me about multi-user weblogging (that
is, setting up a single installation to support multiple
writers, as a teacher might do for a class). I guess they
have been asking other people, and it's James Farmer who
comes through with the goods, a really nice overview of
options for people who want to support multiuser
weblogging. Manila, Drupal, Movable Type, WordPress - I;ve
tried all these tools too, and have confidence they will do
the job. Have a look at Farmer's outlines - it's like a
smorgasbord. By James Farmer, incorporated subversion,
February 22, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Guru
of the ObviousPreparing to rule us all with
an iron fist in a velvet glove, the king of the long tail,
Leon Ipglips is coming to get us. Like the rest of the
bloggers on his hitlist, I welcome our new Oblivious
Overlord. Funny. By Leon Ipglips, Guru of the Obvious,
February, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Real Software Slams Microsoft's Patent
EffortPresumably unaware of Aristotle,
Microsoft is attempting to patent the 'ISNOT' construction
in basic. "The only reason a company would want to lay
claim to such a patent would be to sue anybody who tries to
implement that idea." It's the sort of tactic one would
expect from a company that appears to deliberately
sabotage other software. By Darryl K. Taft, EWeek,
February 21, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Future of FLOSS in education: Interview with
Alan LevineI'm listening to this interview
witn Alan Levine recorded by Teemu Arina (you may recall he
interviewed me a couple of weeks ago). What we get from
Alan is a wonderful romp through the future, from which
Arina extracts this zinger: "In contrary to large and rigid
content management systems, educators and students have
noticed easy personal publishing on a wide scale. One
weblog related to education is created every second
according to statistics provided by Technorati. Google has
launched a specially branded service called EduBlogger™
based on their popular Blogger™ service." Whee! By Teemu
Arina and Alan Levine, FLOSSE Posse, February 23, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

In Defense of Citizen JournalismSteve Outing writes, "In the journalism of tomorrow (and
to an extent, it's already here), everyone will get to have
his or her say. While acceptance of that among traditional
news editors is gaining to a degree, there's plenty of
skepticism and defensiveness still." In the column attached
to this quote he looks at several objections raised by
newspaper editors to the idea of citizen journalism and
responds with a firm insistence that down this path lies
the only real future for traditional media. This item
follows a flurry of similar stories, including two from the
Washington Post (ridiculous registration required) here
and here,
and an item in Forbes here.
By Steve Outing, Editor and Publisher, February 22, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

No Books, No ProblemAccording
to this author, a high school chemistry teacher, "The
students in my general chemistry class almost never open
their textbook. My reason: The less I use the book, the
more they learn." Over the last few years, he writes, he
has banished textbooks from his classroom - for the better.
"Most bore my students and frustrate me... Many promulgate
scientific misconceptions or even outright errors... They
present ideas didactically as discrete facts to be
accepted, rather than as clues of principles to be
discovered and explored." By Geoff Ruth, Edutopia,
February, 2005
[Refer][Research][Reflect]